Sports Reporter
Any good athlete or coach has a lot in common with a cliff diver. Men’s lacrosse coach AJ Stevens and senior Kade Robinson may not have the courage to climb 80 feet high to stand on the brink above the ocean waves, but they know how to jump. And at the bottom of their plummet? A national lacrosse championship awaits.
“This is the year,” Stevens said.
Year four has come for both coach and player. Stevens and Australian-born Robinson, a midfielder, have been a fundamental part of the program since its first year in 2010. Now, the pair prepare for the team’s best season yet as a direct result of unique choices throughout their careers.
This Saturday the team begins its schedule with a 16-hour bus ride to Kansas City, where they’ll play Lindenwood and Rockhurst Universities, then back to Walker Field to face Adams State the following week. For both player and coach, they begin this season with plenty more than a conference championship at stake.
“From day one, we’ve pushed to be a team that can compete for a national championship. I know a lot of coaches talk about it, but our kids really believe it,” Stevens said.
But it was the believing in countless choices before there even was a lacrosse team at CMU that led up to this hopeful year.
Stevens first picked up a lacrosse stick in college. Within four years, he was the captain of the team.
“I think I’m the last generation of coaches to be able to do that,” Stevens said.
After coaching jobs at Dartmouth College, Illinois University and the Chicago Machine from Major League Lacrosse, Stevens made the move out to the high desert of Grand Junction. Here, he was charged with the task of building the lacrosse program from the grass up.
But it was here that the coach did something different, unique and against traditional coaching strategy for collegiate sports.
Stevens chose to begin the program with a group of freshman instead of allowing transfers, paralleled to rival University of Tampa who recruited 30 seniors their first year. As the 2014 season begins, Robinson will be joined on the turf by 11 other original seniors from that first freshman class.
“Coach Stevens sent me an email, asked me if I wanted to play,” Robinson said. “I’d never been here, just knew it was in some town called Grand Junction in the middle of nowhere.”
So Robinson jumped. He flew 8500 miles from his home in Melbourne, Australia, to a place he had never been before, all to play lacrosse. Back home, Robinson played for a club team. For practice, he would take his lacrosse stick and throw a ball against a brick wall for two hours a day, learning the incredibly difficult hand-eye coordination demanded by his sport. But his decision to leave home was just as difficult.
Although a different world for him, the star midfielder and team leader learned skills and aspirations from his new coach.
“Every day I get up and realize why I’m over here, and that’s to play lacrosse. And my ultimate goal is to win a national championship,” Robinson said. “Everything you do, you’ve got that mentality to reach that ultimate goal.”
Stevens and Robinson have much of their lives invested into this season. But when everything is done and when the season is over, both long to return home. Stevens to his family, Robinson to his. Stevens smiles about his 5-year old son, whose pictures adorn his office walls.
“He actually disrupted a game there,” Stevens said, pointing to a picture. “We were getting ready to play BYU, and he grabbed a stick and ran out on the field. I had to walk him off.”
Robinson plans on returning home to Australia after his season is done. But he’s not planning on returning empty-handed.
“We were [Stevens’] first recruiting class that he ever brought to this program. That’s always going to be there as a bond between us and him,” Robinson said. “If we made it to the national championship and won it, that would be epic.”
mtscofield@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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